Charles wagley: Mentor and colleague

Abstract

Professor Charles Wagley was my mentor at Columbia University, my colleague at the University of Florida and a dear friend. His influence on me can be summarized in one word: Brazil. From the time I took his course, "Peoples of Brazil", as a first semester graduate student at Columbia I was captivated and most of my subsequent field research and publications have had Brazilian themes. Under Dr. Wagley's direction I did field research for my dissertation in the coffee region of northern Paraná and focused on the shift from coffee cultivation to cattle ranching and the social and economic consequences of that change. My subsequent research in the area involved the impact of frost on this shift in economic base as well as one of its results: the flight of poor Brazilians to Paraguay. Then starting in the late 1980s my research shifted and I began focusing on Brazilian immigrants in New York City. This was part of a growing movement of Brazilians arriving in New York, elsewhere in the United States and in Europe and Japan. Since then most of my subsequent research and publications have been on this new wave of international migrants.